The unibidi-lua Package

unibidi-lua version 1.0, 2026-05-19

Description

The unibidi-lua Lua module is an implementation of the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm, based on the ConTeXt project's implementation for various LuaTeX formats, and plain lua.

Conformance

The unibidi-lua package aims to fully conform to the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm (Unicode Standard Annex #9). It is tested against the official Unicode conformance test files BidiTest.txt and BidiCharacterTest.txt.

At the time of this writing, Unicode 17.0 was the latest version, and all the tests pass.

Maintenance

This package is currently maintained at https://codeberg.org/polyglossia/unibidi-lua.

Issues can be reported at the issue tracker.

Testing

Testing can be done with l3build check. Note that you need the files BidiCharacterTest.txt and BidiTest.txt somewhere LuaTeX can find them. If you don't have them, you can run l3build getunicodetests to download them to "./testfiles/unicode/support". If you wish you can also ignore these tests by passing the -c flag to l3build check.

Updating the Data File

To update "unibidi-lua-data.lua", run l3build gendata, this will parse the files BidiMirroring.txt, BidiBrackets.txt, and DerivedBidiClass.txt. Usually they exist in a TeX installation (in the unicode-data package), but if they are not they will be downloaded temporarily.

Documentation

To print the documentation run optex -jobname unibidi-lua-doc '\docgen unibidi-lua'

Installation

To install for the use of LuaTeX, you can either run l3build install, put the files "unibidi-lua.lua", "unibidi-lua-data.lua", "unibidi-lua-interface.lua", "unibidi-lua.tex", "unibidi-lua.opm" and "unibidi-lua.sty" in a place LuaTeX can find, or install with your TeX distribution.

For the use of plain lua, put the files "unibidi-lua.lua" and "unibidi-lua-data.lua" somewhere the lua interpreter can find it.

License

The unibidi-lua package, as a derived work of ConTeXt, is distributed under the GNU GPLv2 license:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

This license requires the license itself to be distributed with the work. For its full text see the file COPYING.

Parts of unibidi-lua.lua are © PRAGMA ADE / ConTeXt Development Team.

DISCLAIMER

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.